Solitary-wave loads on a three-dimensional submerged horizontal plate: Numerical computations and comparison with experiments

TL;DR

This paper employs a parallelized 3D boundary element method to simulate solitary wave interactions with a submerged horizontal plate, demonstrating good agreement with experimental data and validating the model's effectiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a fully nonlinear potential flow simulation approach for 3D solitary wave-plate interactions, validated against laboratory experiments.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental wave elevation data

Accurate prediction of forces and pitching moments

Model captures main features of nonlinear wave-plate interaction

Abstract

A parallelized three-dimensional (3D) boundary element method is used to simulate the interaction between an incoming solitary wave and a 3D submerged horizontal plate under the assumption of potential flow. The numerical setup follows closely the setup of laboratory experiments recently performed at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The numerical results are compared with the experimental results. An overall good agreement is found for the two-dimensional wave elevation, the horizontal force and the vertical force exerted on the plate, and the pitching moment. Even though there are some discrepancies, the comparison shows that a model solving the fully nonlinear potential flow equations with a free surface using a 3D boundary element method can satisfactorily capture the main features of the interaction between nonlinear waves and a submerged horizontal plate.